Saturday 31 August 2013

An Introduction

Ciao! .....

Before I whack out some lengthy spiel in Italian about Florence, art, history and the rest of it I am going to have to stop there because at this stage that is almost the full depth of my Italian vocabulary! I jest, but only slightly. You see, whilst I do study Classics and Italian at the University of Edinburgh, I began my joint honours degree in Italian having never actually studied it before. Two years on and my grasp of the 'language of love' is still pretty poor due to a poor lack of application and a series of refusing to get out of bed on a Friday morning for an 11 o'clock tutorial which in my head did not exist. But not to fear, I have high hopes ahead of my year at L'Universita degli studi di Firenze and with a little bit of effort and a lot of dictionary use I might just be able to return with a lot more hand gestures and a few more extravagant Italian-esque sayings in the bag.

To mark the fact I will be spending my 3rd year at University abroad in Florence, I have decided to set up a blog so that I can jot down not only my various jaunts, involvements and discoveries from a year in Firenze, but so that I can also share my views and opinions on the world of sport. I happen to take a keen interest in football (Calcio as it's called in Italy), Cricket (sadly spelt exactly the same as the Italians don't even know what it is), Golf and Tennis. I was fortunate enough to have spent the whole of my 2nd year at Edinburgh writing for the sport's section of The Journal, Scotland's Student Newspaper, and due to this previous experience of sports writing it has made me all the more keen to continue this hobby via a blog when in Italy.

I fly to Pisa and then on to Florence in 4 days time in the company of Dad, as we look to sort out my accommodation with who I hope will be a lovely bunch of Italians. From there it's pretty much 'Chocks Away'. I always thought that that saying was 'Bombs Away' but apparently not.

Alla prossima volta (Thank you Google Translate)